Rachel to come out fighting over hunt pics furore

The TV personality (39) has agreed to be one of the guests on the Saturday Night Show to tell her side of the story to Brendan O'Connor.

"She was shocked and alarmed at the reaction that the photo provoked and really wanted to set the record straight and put across her point of view," said a TV source.

"She's not in favour of things like fox hunting and has never said she was. She feels like this has all been taken out of context."

The well-known chef, who's married to the son of Ballymaloe cookery school founder Darina Allen, was this week hit with a wave of criticism from animal lovers.

recipe

She posted a photo of herself posing with a shotgun and three dead pheasants on the bonnet of her 4x4 after a "day's shooting in North Cork."

Included in the Christmas post was a recipe for game terrine using pheasant meat.

The picture was met with outrage by animal activists.

Some of them branded it "disgusting" and John Carmody, of the Animal Rights Action Network, said he had been inundated with phone calls expressing outrage about the picture.

But she has come out with both guns blazing, issuing a statement saying "the origin or sourcing of food has been a long-held interest and concern of mine and I have gone to great lengths in my current series to trace the provenance of food."

She went on to say she has "no interest in fox hunting of any kind" and has no involvement in the meeting of a local hunt at Ballymaloe House in particular.